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Thursday, October 15, 2015

The Cop-Out that will be COP21

Attempts have been made to present COP 21, the ‘landmark’
Paris climate summit to be held in December as an opportunity to ‘save the
world’. The people behind these appeals appear to believe that if only we had a
big enough petition or an impressive enough march, the political elite might be
persuaded to use the Paris COP to take serious action on climate change. This
may sound harmless and a bit naïve, but the rush to endow the Paris summit with
such importance is a recipe for disappointment.

Since Kyoto it’s become clear that the UN process has failed
to deliver. Canada, Australia and Japan joined the USA in ignoring Kyoto and
pursuing business as usual. The EU only succeeded in meeting emissions targets
by effectively fiddling the numbers. At the Warsaw COP in 2013, where the coal
industry held a conference on the sidelines of the climate summit singing the
praises of the completely fictitious ‘clean coal’. Poland's environment
minister was sacked half way through the summit because he was too slow to
promote fracking in the country.

It’s not only fossil fuel companies whose influence is
growing. The financial sector has gained a stronger role in the disbursement of
climate finance. The UK government, ever in thrall to the interests of the
City, has been the leading force in pushing for the UN Green Climate Fund’s
Private Sector Facility to channel more money through financial intermediaries
and corporate fund managers. The agribusiness lobby is active in promoting
schemes like the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture, which aims to
present these companies’ unsustainable intensive industrial methods as some
sort of solution to climate change. This combination of corporate lobbying
means that every year very little happens at climate summits, as the big
emitters succeed in kicking the can down the road.

So, let’s be clear. There is very little chance of a deal in
Paris that will make a significant difference to the climate crisis. The talks
will follow the same pattern we see every year: two weeks of deadlock and
backroom talks excluding critical voices, followed by a last minute compromise
deal that ‘saves’ the summit at the expense of actually taking any action. The
need to sign a deal that includes hardline climate laggards like the US, Canada
and Australia will mean an unambitious agreement. Those NGOs who whip their
supporters into a frenzy (and take their donations) encourage their
constituencies to believe they can put pressure on governments to come up with
a deal. The same NGOS then feel compelled to pretend that the pressure has
worked and progress has been made.

Paris is not going to save the world. And those who pretend
that it will are deluded at best, and downright dangerous at worst. Dangerous
because while we continue to waste time hoping for a miracle in Paris, the
resulting inaction risks becoming a death sentence for a number of countries,
especially small island nations like Kiribati which will disappear under rising
sea levels. Other countries will see falling crop yields and rising drought,
which promise to kill millions of people.